


an unraveling of old and new

by precipiceofyearning



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Body Image, Established Relationship, Feelings, Ficlet, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, October Prompt Challenge, Scars, Very mild body horror, light fluff with an undertone of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26799220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/precipiceofyearning/pseuds/precipiceofyearning
Summary: Hisoka has a day-to-day disguise, but not in the conventional sense. Illumi uncovers it.
Relationships: Hisoka/Illumi Zoldyck
Comments: 10
Kudos: 225





	an unraveling of old and new

They’re collapsed over each other, three feet past the front door of Hisoka’s apartment in Yorknew with Illumi straddling his hips and trailing open-mouthed kisses down to his collarbones, when Illumi first notices it. A curling flap of something peeling off and something darker beneath, and it’s such a small detail that his eyes are barely sharp enough to see it. 

Huh. Texture Surprise?

Illumi nips at the area and stops abruptly, leaning back. Confusion clouds Hisoka’s face, and the magician puts a hand to the bite mark, feels around the area for a moment. He’s a good actor. The perplexed look stays fixed on fine features, but Illumi’s good enough (or, rather, _familiar_ enough) to tell what’s real and what’s not now. 

He looks down at him.

“Show me.”

“Show you what?” Hisoka entertains with a derisive curl of his lips. The expression borders a sneer, and it’s the worst when he’s like this, all smug and provocative and constantly deflecting. Fleeing, like he wants Illumi to chase, wants to watch him squirm and struggle. 

“You,” he states flatly, bracing a stern hand on the floorboards next to Hisoka’s ribs. “I want to see you.”

Hisoka plays coy, cocks his head slightly to the right like he has no clue. The smirk on his lips does not let up, but there’s a split second of hesitation in his eyes that Illumi would have been quick to brand as uncertainty if he hadn’t known any better. Neither of them backs down, until eventually, the Hunter laughs with a wave of his hand, gives in. “Alright, I’ll let you see. It’s nothing that interesting, though.”

Sharpened nails point towards him, nearing the tip of his nose when Hisoka reaches up to that arm with his other hand and peels it; a porcelain layer of skin, smooth as marble. The Texture Surprise folds in upon itself as it falls off the pallid appendage like a thin veneer. Hisoka discards it, tosses it off to the side. 

Illumi’s seen a lot of things in his life, as an assassin, but few things compare to the state of his lover’s skin. Scars trace over the pale skin in darker, branching lines; curl over it from finger to shoulder like lace. A few inches atop the base of his forearm, a line of precise stitches encircle it like it had been hacked off and reattached. There’s another round of similar ones, at his bicep. Illumi stays expressionless as he draws a careful hand over the handiwork, attention rapt as he inspects it. The muscles and nerves have been cleanly reattached at the points of the stitches, with no evidence that they had been severed in the first place. Had his eyes been closed, he would have been none the wiser. Illumi moves up the exposed arm and grasps onto Hisoka’s hand. It’s rough and calloused, more characteristic of a seasoned fighter. His fingers slide over the blistered skin.

“You’ve got some serious issues if you’re getting turned on by this,” Hisoka interjects.

His face crinkles, “In your dreams.” 

Until then, Hisoka had always looked something of a pretty thing, a face full of makeup and not a single imperfection on his body. He had never questioned it, either. Seeing Hisoka here, face naked and exposed, his _skin_ exposed to show what lays underneath, is almost uncomfortably intimate. He looks down at Hisoka and straightens, leaning away. “Well?”

“Hm?”

Illumi gestures to Hisoka’s top half.

“You want to see more?” A curated grin comes to Hisoka’s face, but the lack of authenticity sets it apart from his usual conniving, wry expressions. “You’re dirty, Illumi.”

He’s quick to correct him. “I’m _curious_.”

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

Without missing a beat, “And satisfaction brought it back.”

He arches an eyebrow, then gives a lilting, smooth whistle. A breathy laugh, almost a scoff, escapes sneering lips as his teeth bare around the words, “You’re persistent today.”

Hisoka’s fingers pinch at the top of his collarbone, and then pull diagonally, down to the opposite side of his waist. The aura’s lifelike in texture until it comes off, and when it does, it snaps back like a balloon stretched taut as Hisoka tugs it off, a sigh leaving his lips. “Really, it’s nothing worth that much attention.”

Injuries. Old, new, and so endless in number that there are places where the scars meld together in darker splotches and he can’t quite tell where some of them begin and where others will end. Something he can’t put a name to fills the cavity of his chest, swelling and swirling and threatening to burst.

“See?” Hisoka waves a hand over his chest, “Just some old injuries.”

His words are unheard, lost somewhere in the thick, suffocating silence between them. 

“Illumi?” 

The assassin is unresponsive, black holes for eyes gazing into the largest scar of them all—a weblike discoloration bigger than Illumi’s splayed palm. It juts out every which way, a star with more points than he can count, and at the center, there’s a thin, ruddy sheen where the skin is still healing anew. It’s recent. He can tell, and it’s such a sizable wound that he’s just surprised he’s not straddling a dead body on the ground right now. Illumi stares it down, and of all the old, old marks he has seen so far, this is the first time he wants the story. The who, what, when, where. 

Why.

The _why_ isn’t the hard part to figure out. What’s difficult to Illumi is understanding the rage that consumes him, this frantic sense of compulsion and need, because even if this one doesn’t kill Hisoka— 

“Illumi,” his lover says, firmly this time, when the bloodlust starts _bleeding_ off of Illumi.

He blinks, feeling all the overpowering emotion drain from him at the call of his name. 

Hisoka’s watching him, all previous entertainment wiped clean off his face and something else to those honeyed eyes. Something complex. Illumi wonders if it is pity, but he cannot tell for whom it would be. 

“Yes,” Illumi answers quietly. “What is it?”

“You care about me,” Hisoka says aloud, a grin easing onto his face. “That’s beautiful.”

Beautiful. Illumi is certain that he has never heard anything like that, not in reference to his love. He knows what his love is like to other people. He has been told that it is smothering. That it is ugly and suffocating and extreme. He wonders if he should be concerned that Hisoka of all people is the first to call it beautiful, or flattered.

“But, this is it. My dirty little secret,” Hisoka continues before Illumi can reply. “Having so many scars out in the open would be troublesome, so I conceal them, and they’re not very attractive either.”

“I like them,” he says and it’s _them_ , not _you_ , even if his pulse is racing and his skin flushes where Hisoka’s gaze burns holes in them. He puts a hand to Hisoka’s bare chest, and the redhead looks back at him with something of surprise on his face, momentarily. “You feel more real like this.”

Hisoka laughs without rancor.

“Then maybe I should unveil myself like this more often,” a lick of his lips as Hisoka reaches up to cradle the other’s face in his hands. Dark hair pools onto the ground like ink as Illumi dips down, and his lover’s lips taste like bubblegum and iron, sweet and sharp. “Just for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading to the end! this was written for hxhtober, prompt 2: disguises.


End file.
